Mexico to extradite drug suspects

Fox's pledge comes before Bush meeting

March 29, 2006|By New York Times News Service

MEXICO CITY — President Vicente Fox of Mexico said Tuesday that his government would begin suspending trials against suspected drug traffickers wanted in the United States and extradite them for prosecution in U.S. courts.

Such a move, which Fox said would begin in the next few weeks, would mark a significant shift in the fight against the drug trade in Mexico, where political leaders have rejected extraditions as an infringement of sovereignty.

Fox's comments, during an interview aboard the presidential airplane, appeared intended as a goodwill gesture before he meets with President Bush on Thursday. The two leaders will be joined by Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada in Cancun to discuss trade, security and immigration.

The change Fox suggested in prosecuting drug traffickers could close off the loopholes in Mexican laws that suspects have used to prolong their trials in Mexico for years, while continuing to operate their illegal businesses from behind bars.

The United States has pressed Mexico for decades to tear down the legal barriers that blocked the removal of such suspects from Mexican territory. Those barriers began to crumble earlier this year when, in a groundbreaking decision, the Mexican Supreme Court found that life sentences, which suspects would receive in U.S. courts, would not violate the Mexican Constitution.

Fox, in the interview, also said his government next month would order the extraditions of five suspected drug traffickers even before their trials had finished in Mexico.